Ethics Train Wrecks

University Presidents Say That Higher Ed Has “Lost The Trust” of the Public—Gee, Ya THINK?

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

When it takes universities and colleges this long to figure out what was already obvious for years, no wonder the public has lost trust in them.

“We Lost Our Mission’: Three University Leaders on the Future of Higher Ed” is the latest “Breaking: Water is Wet!” media headline, this one at the New York Times[gift link]. Sian Beilock, president of Dartmouth College, Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, and Jennifer Mnookin, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, spoke with Times’ opinion editor Ariel Kaminer. Despite the headline, it is not an encouraging discussion.

The gist of the three presidents’ “confession” is the same as that of the Biden Administration’s response to the public’s gradual realization that its policies were a disaster. “We need better messaging!” Translation: “We need to get better at fooling people into thinking we are doing what we are not.”

The three university presidents criticized the Trump administration’s efforts to reform higher education’s conversion from educating to indoctrinating while saying they must work to regain the trust of the American people and emphasize viewpoint diversity. “I don’t believe a compact with a Republican or Democratic-led White House is the right way to effect change in higher ed,” Beilock said. Funny though: the three wouldn’t be making having this discussion if the Trump administration wasn’t throwing a spotlight on their bias and failure. “The Trump administration is cracking down, artificial intelligence is ramping up, varsity athletes are getting paid and a college education is losing its status as the presumptive choice of ambitious high school seniors,” the article begins. Yes, that’s a fair summary of where higher education is right now, with no improvement in sight.

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Encore! “From The ‘I Don’t Understand This At All’ Files: Why Should ‘Historically Black Colleges’ Be Getting A Surge In Donations?”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I was about to write almost the exact same essay I wrote in 2019, but fortunately something deep within what I jokingly called “my brain” prompted me to check the Ethics Alarms archives and now I have an extra 45 minutes or so to spend organizing my sock drawer. Sure enough, I had published the lament before, and prompted by the same stimulus”: a New York Times news item.

Yesterday’s article (gift link!) was was déjà vu too: “MacKenzie Scott Gives $700 Million to Historically Black Colleges.” In 2019, I wrote “The philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has given more than $500 million to more than 20 historically Black colleges in the past year.” That was bonkers, her current gift is bonkers, but this item in the latest Times article is really  nuts: 

“President Trump has also shown support for historically Black institutions. In his first term, he distributed $250 million in annual funding and cut more than $300 million in federal loans for the schools. In April, through an executive order, he unveiled a new White House job to oversee H.B.C.U.s. But the position currently remains vacant.

“Dr. Gasman, the Rutgers professor, said the Trump administration has sent mixed signals. The president has sought to crack down on diversity programs in education and has complained about the teaching of Black history. The funds for H.B.C.U.s and tribal colleges were announced as the federal government cut programs that support minority students in science and engineering programs and schools with significant Hispanic enrollment.

“They are willing to support Black people in Black institutions, but they are not very comfortable with Black people in white institutions,” Dr. Gasman said.”

That’s deliberately negative spin, but it’s not completely unjust. What the hell? Historically black colleges are the epitome of “good discrimination” in the hypocritical style of DEI. Howard, Harris’s alma mater (Be proud,Howard—you graduated a babbling fool!), got the largest donation from Scott, 80 million bucks. Do you know what the white enrollment at Howard is? Less than 1%! Talk about disparate impact—you know, the EEOC trick that finds invidious discrimination based on statistics alone?

Across all of the HBUCs, there are about 10% white students  and 2% Asians. I thought Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the way to ensure no discrimination based on race, was to not engage in discrimination based on race. This is undeniably discrimination based on race.

The Trump Administration should not be supporting black colleges and universities. If most of our elite colleges are a sham, spending more time on ideological indoctrination than on teaching, the Historically Black Colleges and Universities are worse. By an “in isn’t what it is” PR haze endorsed by the news media (‘Oh! They are historic! That means they are good schools, right?’ Right, just as the historic Biden press secretary Karine Saint-Pierre was “good.” They aren’t good: they have inferior standards for admission, inferior faculties, and their graduates come out with misleading diplomas) the public is led to believe that these are elite institutions too.

Ten years ago, Ethics Alarms played a minor role in saving Virginia’s Sweet Briar college from being closed by a board that decided that an all-women’s college was an anachronism and no longer needed. I argued that there were many good reasons to have all female colleges as an option for women, but none of those good reasons apply to racially segregated schools.

OK, now I am getting into the substance of the essay from six years ago, and I have frittered away some of that saved sock drawer time. Heeere’s Jack!— from 2019….in “From The ‘I Don’t Understand This At All’ Files: Why Should ‘Historically Black Colleges’ Be Getting A Surge In Donations?”

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Make no mistake: I know why they are getting a surge in donations: cynical virtue-signalling and mindless George Floyd Freakout tribute. However, like the historically black colleges themselves, the phenomenon of picking now to celebrate segregated education, and mostly inferior education, is self-contradictory. It also highlights the hypocrisy of the “antiracism” movement itself, and the incoherence of the “diversity” chants coming from the Left.

For these colleges are the opposite of diverse. They are, in fact, discriminatory in concept and execution, and to see them “thrive” while activists are demanding literal quotas in other institutions in order to create numerical demographic parity—at least—is a blazing example of how the George Floyd Ethics Train wreck is less a cultural awakening than it is an opportunistic and unethical power play fueled by white guilt and cowardice.

The front page article in the New York Times today is so full of head-banging-on-the-wall moments I ran out of head before I ran out of wall. Here are some…

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Observations on the Epstein Drama. Summary: I Don’t Understand This At All.

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments

Right now, a sniffling groups of women including past victims of the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking operations are standing in front of the Capitol before Congress’s vote on releasing “the Epstein files,” whatever that means at this point. One speaker—they are all saying not just kind-of the same thing, but exactly the same thing but in different words (sometimes) said that their lament isn’t about politics. It’s obviously about politics. Both CNN and MSNBC, the most aggressive Democratic propaganda agents broadcasting, are showing the demonstration live, as if it’s important news. Fox News is barely mentioning it.

The issue is political and partisan. The proof is irrefutable. Why didn’t the victims, or whoever organized them, or the mainstream media, insist that the Biden Administration release the files when the power to do so was entirely within its grasp? Nobody thought of it? The Democrats were fabricating ways to “Get Trump” and had been since 2015; everyone knew he had once been pals with Epstein; and the scandal was 20 years old. The Epstein revival only became a thing when the Axis of Unethical Conduct became desperate in its efforts to slow down Trump 2.0 as his administration began dismantling the Obama-Biden nascent totalitarian state. Naturally, Axis media was all in. Naturally, publicity hound Marjorie Taylor Greene, who comprehends neither law nor logic, decided to use it to get cheap clicks. Maybe she really thinks a rehash of the evil deeds of a man who has been dead for six years is a good use of her time; who knows? She’s an idiot.

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So What’s With The “Groypers”?

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

I guess because I regard podcasts as a waste of time, the term “Groyper” was happily outside my consciousness until very recently. The main reason I encountered it at all was the latest Tucker Carlton controversy that metastasized into a big PR problem for the Heritage Foundation. Tucker—note please that Ethics Alarms identified him as a principle-free, self-aggrandizing, cynical Ethics Villain years ago, even before his Fox News stardom: See? “I’m smart! I’m not dumb like everybody says!”—has been cozying up to Hitler apologists, Holocuast-deniers, anti-Semites and white supremacists because, as usual, he’s decided that its where the clicks and “likes” lie among the easily fooled and ignorant. After he had a slobbering interview with white supremacist (above) Nick Fuentes (whose followers call themselves “Groypers“), Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, posted a disgaceful video on social media praising and defending the creep (I mean Carlson in this case) while using terms that sounded like anti-Semitic dog-whistles.

I should have posted on it, but I wrongly assumed Roberts would have been forced to resign by now. The board of Heritage should get cracking: one thing conservatives, Republicans and MAGA do not need is for the #1 conservative think tank to be perceived as backing fascists (referring to Fuentes this time) and lying assholes (back to Tucker).

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Write Your Own Ethics Movie Treatment In Today’s Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The condign justice article in the New York Times right now is the news about how badly comedies and drama are doing at the movie box office. Good. Hollywood deserves it, and has for a while. The gift link is here, but the article is biased and incompetent. When the Times gets around to theorizing about why this is happening, guess what it omits?

The Wuhan Virus freakout and lockdown, which Hollywood’s wildly woke pals in the news media, the medical profession, the teachers’ unions and in government agencies inflicted on the nation and the culture. Ending the important social binding function of shared audience experiences is just one of the collateral catastrophes the mass, partially politically-motivated fearmongering created.

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The Democratic Shutdown Was 100% Unethical: Let’s See If The Axis News Media Succeeds in Blaming It On Trump and Republicans…

/ Jack Marshall / 45 Comments

Then, you see, in Axis of Unethical Conduct Land, the disastroud, doomed to fail shutdown was ethical because “it worked.” The Harry Reid Principle (“Romney lost, didn’t he?”).

“Why did you decide to vote with Republicans to open the government?” Joe Scarborough (on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”) asked “Independent” Senator Angus King (of Maine), who is a Democrat without the guts to admit it.

“Well, Joe, you have to go back to what the strategy was at the beginning of the shutdown,” King answered. “There were two goals, both of which I support. One was standing up to Donald Trump. The other was getting some resolution on the ACA premium tax credit issue. The problem was, the shutdown wasn’t accomplishing either goal. And there was practically, well, it was zero likelihood that it was going to.”

And there you have it! The Democrats were willing to harm the economy, government employees, the poor, federal workers and more to “stand up” to Trump, meaning that the shutdown had as much validity as the “No Kings” rallies and the Trump Deranged who gathered for a primal scream at the sky. The ACA premium tax credit issue had already been resolved, but the Democrats, who ironically enough, no longer support democracy, didn’t like the way it was resolved by an elected majority.

King caucuses with the Democrats; he knows what they talked about. Like any good totalitarians, which is what they have become, the entire party with a few outliers like Senator Fetterman, is counting on a captive, Pravda-style news media to mislead the public so they blame President Trump and Republicans for the damage they did unilaterally.

I wonder if they’ll get away with it…

Unethical (and Stupid) Quote of the Month: Zohran Mamdani [First in a Long, Long Series…]

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

“We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.”

—Zohran Mamdani‘s marathon victory speech on Election Night, after the Democratic Socialist (that is, Communist) was elected as New York City’s mayor.

A commenter asked my opinion regarding Mamdani’s speech and I demurred, because it was standard commie tripe that I’ve read and heard from everyone from Lenin to Castro, and now this guy. He speaks well, and I’m always in favor of that as a key leadership skill. So did David Koresh. However, as I kept seeing that quote being published by the disgracefully uncritical mainstream media, my inner Popeye scratched to get out (“It’s all I can stands, ’cause I can’t stands no more!”) Who does he think he’s kidding?

Perhaps more importantly, what is the proper reaction to any American who wasn’t raised in a cave who doesn’t hear that insane claim and conclude, “Oh, brother! So much for that guy. He’s either lying, ignorant or a moron”? At very least it’s “RUN AWAY!”

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Ethical or Unethical Quote? President Trump on Nancy Pelosi:

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments


“Nancy Pelosi, the old and broken political hack who Impeached me twice and lost, is finally calling it ‘quits.’ She illegally made a fortune in the Stock Market, ripped off the American Public, and was a disaster for America. I’m glad to see the stench of Nancy Pelosi go!!!”

—President Donald Trump on Truth Social today, responding to the news that Ethics Villain Nancy Pelosi will not run for another term. (What do you really think, Mr. President?)

I was going to frame this as an Ethics Quiz, but thought better of it. Of course a U.S President shouldn’t stoop to this kind of rhetoric, even if everyone else is, about him. “Old and broken,” “hack” and “stench” cross the line into ad hominem, but then that’s Trump, unfortunately. The sentiment, however is deserved, which is why EA designated Pelosi as an Ethics Villain. She has been an unequivocally destructive force on the U.S. scene, from her irresponsible and unethical ushering of Obamacare through to passage without letting it be thoroughly vetted, to her ruinous impeachments (we no longer have a non-partisan impeachment option, thanks to her precedents) to her disgusting performance during Trump’s final State of the Union address in his last term, to the rigged “J-6” hearings. Trump is also correct about her insider trading, though she has the defense of “Everybody does it,” just not as effectively as she did.

Yes, Trump’s message is typical “tit-for-tat” after she called him a “vile creature” and the “worst thing on the face of the earth,” to which “hack” and “stench” seem mild insults in comparison. President still have an obligation to eschew such name-calling and “take the high road,” a principle that Trump either rejects or refuses to acknowledge.

On the other hand, as Captain Hook would never say, everything Trump said is true. So there’s that… Ann Althouse wrote that she was impressed that Trump didn’t slip any sexist rhetoric into his message.

And that, my friends, is called damning with faint praise.

NYT Subscriptions Surge, Meaning That Journalism’s One-Way Bias and Ethics Rot Is Not Going Away Soon

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

In a post yesterday, I wrote, in the final note on the ethical implications of this week’s election results,

“None of this would have unfolded in quite the same way, I am certain, without a corrupt journalism sector that has totally abdicated the duty of its profession in favor of partisan propaganda. I am more convinced than ever that the Republic will not function efficiently or engender responsible citizenship until there is news media commitment to fair, objective, responsible, unbiased and honest communication to the public of what it needs to know to make intelligent decisions about their governance. There has been some progress toward that end this year, but not nearly enough.”

Well, evoking William Barrett Travis when Santa Anna demanded the surrender of the Alamo, the New York Times “answered with a cannon shot.”

“The Times’s Profit Jumps With 460,000 More Subscribers” the headline today reads. “The Times now has 12.33 million total subscribers to all of its products. It has said it is aiming for 15 million by the end of 2027.” The article (gift link!), which you can read yourself if you have the stomach for it, has lots of other good news for the Times bottom line,

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Ethics Hero: Singer Tish Hyman

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

In an ethics seminar I recently described how conduct could be legal but unethical (example: lying) and ethical but illegal (civil disobedience). Singer Trish Hyman decided that a little disturbance of the peace in a Gold’s Gym’s cafe area was the best way to draw attention to the gym’s unethical (and stupid….but woke, so it’s okay) practices regarding dangling penises in women’s changing rooms, so she shouted out her complaint raucously and made sure it was recorded.

The Beverly Center Gold’s Gym revoked the singer’s membership after she complained that a transgender wannabe woman (“with a big dick”) being in the women’s dressing room. “Today I was naked in the locker room. I turned around, and there was a man there. Boy clothes, lip gloss, standing there looking at me, and I’m butt naked,” Hyman said in a video posted on TikTok.

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